Dreadnaught

“We’re making assumptions. Examine what you’re taking for granted. What are hypernet gates for?”

“Very-high-speed interstellar transportation.” That was what he had first been told, and that was how humanity used them.

“What else can they be used for? Think of other potential uses that the aliens might consider primary uses.”

“I can’t think of anything else the gates are designed to do. As far as other capabilities, we know if they’re collapsed they—” He looked over at Desjani. “They’re weapons. The gates are weapons. Doomsday defenses for any star system.”

“Defenses?” Desjani asked, incredulous. “Like, a minefield?”

“The biggest damn minefield imaginable.” Geary pulled up a star display. “The enigmas were the ones who discovered how to build hypernets. They knew before they built any how dangerous hypernet gates could be. They never built them in their most valuable star systems. They built them on their borders.”

Charban shook his head. “A willingness to deliberately employ such things as defensive weapons? A great wall of hypernet gates? It’s a scorched-earth defense magnified beyond comprehension.”

“They’ve proven willing to destroy their damaged ships,” Rione pointed out, “and the crews of those ships. To us, it seems unimaginably ruthless. But to them, it seems such a defense is conceivable.”

“We got past it,” Geary said. “Maybe because we never intended to attack those star systems. We just wanted to get through them. Maybe that surprised the enigmas.”

Dr. Shwartz had been listening. “There’s also the possibility that the enigmas themselves shrank from employing such weapons. As different as they may be from us, self-preservation must play a role in their thinking even if it is species based rather than individually focused. There have been cases in human history where weapons were constructed and prepared, but not employed because their destructive power frightened those who had created them. The gates may be intended to deter attacks since their presence would make an assault on that star system impossible. The point may be not to use them.”

“They wouldn’t work as a deterrent unless potential attackers believed that the enigmas were willing to use them to wipe out their own star systems as well as the attackers,” Charban insisted.

“I believe it,” Desjani said.

Geary had his eyes locked on the display. Maybe there was still some hidden trap out there. The decision on whether to leave the area of the jump point and head into the inner star system was up to him. The uncertainties still surrounding what enigma technologies could do, and the enigma fondness for striking by surprise, made the decision far from easy. But in order to learn more about this race, he would have to send ships closer to some of those planets.

Split the force? Send out a strong formation, able to handle those dozen enigma warships and anything that might be expected to pop up while the rest of the fleet stayed near the jump point? “How much would be enough?” Geary wondered out loud.

Desjani frowned, then understood. “That would depend upon the threat.”

“And we don’t know the threat, which is why I’m considering splitting the force. Is the right response to an unknown danger to divide my own forces?”

“Not if you put it that way.” She waved toward her display. “If there were a gate here, sending everyone in-system would just ensure the destruction of the entire fleet. But there isn’t a gate.”

He could spend a long time wondering about what to do, hoping some new information would come in. But the enigmas were pursuing this fleet, and they had faster-than-light communications. The longer he waited, the more alien warships were likely to show up. “We’ll go as a fleet. My gut feeling is that any threat that appears in the next few days would be a serious challenge to part of this fleet, but together we should be able to handle whatever shows up.”

She grinned. “Where to, Admiral? The closest inhabited planet?”

“No.” He highlighted a decent-size installation on a large moon of a gas giant orbiting two light hours from the star. “We head for that. Isolated and not very large, so it won’t have the kind of defenses we might run into on one of the planets. If the enigmas’ anti-surveillance methods can even block our search efforts when we’re close, then we can send uncrewed probes in.”

“They might be able to destroy the probes.”

“Then we’ll hammer their defenses before we send the Marines to knock down doors and get some information the hard way.”

Desjani approved, of course, and when Geary looked back to check on his observers, he saw Rione as impassive as usual these days, while Charban simply appeared resigned to the necessity of using force.

He put the fleet onto a vector aimed at intercepting the gas giant in its orbit around the star newly christened Limbo but kept the fleet’s velocity at point one light speed.